


between the lines

by fieryrondo



Category: Figure Skating RPF, Olympics RPF, Sports RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Dimension Travel, How many aus can i hit, M/M, Magical Realism, Secret Santa, Time Travel, i tried to be as serious as possible, kssc one year exchange, like all of them - Freeform, this is honestly one of the weirdest things i've ever written
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-15
Updated: 2020-02-15
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:42:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22654201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fieryrondo/pseuds/fieryrondo
Summary: Javi just wants to go home.
Relationships: Javier Fernández & Yuzuru Hanyu, Javier Fernández/Yuzuru Hanyu
Comments: 19
Kudos: 55
Collections: The KSSC Gift Exchange!





	between the lines

**Author's Note:**

  * For [setoso](https://archiveofourown.org/users/setoso/gifts).



> The usual RPF disclaimer applies: this is a work of complete and utter fiction, and the characters bear no resemblance to their real-life counterparts. Given the AU nature of this fic, there are a few disturbing scenes but nothing graphic. At the risk of giving too much away, I have adjusted the rating for this particular reason.
> 
> Shout out to capra for organizing this exchange!

Javi awakens to find a beautiful woman in his arms.

His teenage self would have been thrilled. Mortified actually. Perhaps even a little awed. But Javi is no longer fifteen or wide-eyed and the only thought running through his head as he holds onto this unconscious woman is _what the fuck, that’s a lot of silk._

It was a _lot_ of silk. The poor woman was drowning in her robes. No wonder she had passed out. The fabric looked expensive too. Patterns of swallows and flowers too detailed and intricate to be anything less than embroidered by hand. And was that real gold thread? Looping pinprick stitches smaller than butterfly feet. 

Muscle fibers pull, stretch, and taut. Javi staggers under the weight, the robes slipping from his fingers. It seems rude to dump her unceremoniously on the dirt like that but he needed at least one free hand to call for help.

Javi reaches into his pocket for his phone.

He pulls out a flute.

Seriously, what the fuck.

Javi contemplates the heft of the polished wood with his fingers. Twirls it in the palm of his hand like a fidget spinner. Lets it clatter on the chalk drenched ground.

A jolt when a hand seizes his wrist.

“Miss, are you OK _—_?”

It's hard to tell who screams louder: Javi or the woman trying to bite him. Who was shockingly strong for someone of her size. (There was a dark joke about pairs ladies somewhere.) It was all that Javi could do to keep her fangs from tenderizing his neck. Or face. Keeping those incisors from any part of his body would be great, thank you very much. The part of his mind that divulges commentary in the face of terror unhelpfully notes a brace of claws digging into his elbows, the pair of horns behind a curtain of meaty drool and hungry snarl.

"Get down!"

A voice calls, a light in the dark. The woman shrieks and falls away. She digs into her back with her claws to pull at the fletching in vain. Two more arrows swiftly join their brethren. 

Bloodstained and more than a little panicked, Javi looks up. Lays his eyes upon his rescuer, garbed in robes of rich cream and parrot green. Lips quirked in a shadowed but soft smile. The curve of a longbow clasped in a veiny hand, the other hand extended in invitation. A chime of bells.

Oh, this was so unfair, Javi thinks as he stares. Even the stupid little hat looked cool under the moonlight.

"Didn't I tell you to wait for me, Javier?"

A thousand questions shudder behind Javi's teeth. _Whowhatwhere_ -what the fuck is going on. Since when did Javi become Javier?

Instead:

"I think I prefer the purple." And then Javi makes the mistake of looking down. His breath catches. His heart stutters. He realizes exactly why his socks are wet.

So he grasps at the only manly course of action available at that moment and swoons.

* * *

Javi stirs to the gentle hum of ceiling fan. For a blessed moment, he savors the modern comforts of a Western bed and soft comforter and white sheets. Muzzily, he loosens his rumpled tie.

His fingers stall. Ice floods his veins awake. His shirt. The suit he was wearing. The suspiciously Italian shoes at the foot of the bed. He tries them on. All perfectly fitted. But _not his._

_Where am I?_

He looks up. Sees Pooh perched by the vanity mirror. It's missing an eye.

For some reason, the half-inch of exposed cotton chills him more than the fact he's wearing clothes that don't belong to him. That he doesn't even remember putting on. All he remembers is the splatter of wet iron between his toes _—_

Stop. Don't panic. Assess surroundings.

Javi breathes. Lets the nightmare fade into the silence of fabric. Wiggles his toes. (Nice socks.)

He's in a hotel room. The blinds are pulled shut. If he had to hazard a guess from the sliver of light, it's midday. There's Under Armour activewear tossed on the other side of the bed. The sight of a familiar gray suitcase soothes the pressure in Javi's chest. The owner of the suitcase was not in the room. Perhaps Yuzuru had gone down to the lobby for breakfast.

Javi's stomach grumbles. Breakfast sounded very appealing. But first, a shower. Javi grimaces at the rumpled tie, the creases in his suit jacket. He must have been thoroughly smashed to have fallen asleep in his clothes.

Weird. Javi can't find his suitcase. He scours the room, checks the closet, the bathroom, even the dresser under the TV. Nothing. Maybe his suitcase was with Brian? Wait, was this even his room, to begin with?

The cherry blossom shower gel in the bathroom. 

Javi puts his head in his hands and groans.

His phone buzzes. With a huff, Javi reaches under his pillow. Déjà vu rips seams in his nerves, boneless fingers letting go. 

The pistol falls to the carpet with a heavy thump.

What the fuck. A rather unwelcome refrain.

Don't panic. A semblance of rational thought slips a stitch. 

His phone buzzes under Pooh's paw. Javi seizes it like a lifeline.

[CIONTU]: they're here. get out.

Javi barely manages to make it out the door when he hears the sound of shattering glass. He ducks. He weaves. He _runs_ , heart pounding against his rib cage, his lungs fit to burst, ears ringing with a sound he's only heard before in movies. Down the stairs, through the back corridor, emergency exit and outside.

To his immense relief, he sees Brian waving to him frantically from the back of a van.

"Where were you?" Brian asks, his brow creased with concern as he pulls the van door shut.

"I _—_ " Javi falls forward when the van lurches into motion. An unapologetic "sorry" from Ghislain at the front. A helicopter chufs and cuts from above. The entire vehicle shudders. Javi's nose unhappily acquaints itself with the side of the van. The window Javi's leaning on becomes uncomfortably hot.

_"Oh my God, are they bombing us?"_

_"I thought you said we were beyond stupid questions."_

Javi gapes. The sky falls. Pigs fly. The ISU follows their rulebook.

"Since when do _you_ speak Spanish?"

Yuzuru's lip curls, his eyebrows drawn tight together.

"I don't tell you how bad your Japanese is." A haughty sniff. Yuzuru turns to speak with Brian. It's probably absurdly important, but the only thing running through Javi's head is how he wouldn't mind if Yuzuru spoke to him in that softly accented Spanish for the rest of his life.

The van shudders again. Ghislain makes what Javi is sure to be a perfectly illegal U-turn. Smoke perfumes the air in an ashy tang.

"How many?"

"Three tanos. ISU grade. Coming in hard and fast." Tracy's voice crackles over the radio. Brian swears, shouts at Jun-hwan for backup. Javi watches Yuzuru assemble an air rifle with the precision of everyday practice. His fingers fly like blades over ice.

Their eyes meet. Javi grasps at the thread, pricks himself all over again.

"I only tease. Your Japanese is not that bad." A note of worry creeps into Yuzuru's voice. English words soften somehow. "You know I respect you."

"Forever?" Javi echoes a sentiment from a world away.

Yuzuru smirks and shoves the completed weapon into Javi's lap.

"You lose your gun again, didn't you." He says, eyes crinkling. The rebuke doesn't even register, Yuzuru's eyes were that bright.

Javi wonders what it would be like to kiss him. Then he remembers.

"Saved Pooh, though."

Yuzuru's eyes soften as he accepts the plush. He upends it to pull out a magazine.

"Thanks."

"Brace yourselves!" Ghislain yells.

Light. Impact. And then a roar.

* * *

"...met in Toronto 2012 where they train together at The Toronto Cricket Club under Brian Orser...will be attempting the quadruple axel..."

Javi slips on an edge and pitches forward.

"Whoa whoa, you ok, Javi?" Brian calls from behind the boards.

The boards. There are _boards_. And ice. Blessed beautifully solidly cold ice.

"Um, just because I kiss the ice doesn't mean you have to."

Swathed in green and blue, Yuzuru offers a hand. Javi takes it, the whine of the tano drones fading into the familiar roar of a cheering audience.

A Moomin banner orients Javi. Helsinki. 2017. Worlds.

What the fuck. But at least this time, this time, this world made sense.

To Javi's surprise, Yuzuru doesn't whisk off to marinate in his usual pre-comp stew. Instead, they stroke side by side together, an exercise so familiar it's disorienting. Javi slows down to let Yuzuru pass but Yuzuru only loops back, pulls in closer, matches his speed, their fingertips brushing. Eye to eye, point to point. Connected. An ache shudders through Javi’s bones like thunder. Like inevitability.

The last time...the last time they did this. In Gangneung. Or it will be. Pyeongchang hasn't happened yet.

“You ok?” A hand on his wrist. It was not rare for Yuzuru to look concerned but it was rare to see him look concerned on behalf of another. Especially in public. Javi does not kid himself. They might be friends, but in competition, the walls came back up again. Yuzuru, after all, had eyes only for gold.

"Just...just a little off my game," Javi says. Helsinki was not as pleasant of a memory as it was _—_ as it would be for Yuzuru. If he's honest, he's not really looking forward to it. He barely remembers the steps of his Elvis program.

"So...quad axel, huh?"

"Ghislain said it was ok," Yuzuru says, almost defensively.

"You don't need it." Javi knows Yuzuru doesn't need it, even if Yuzuru doesn't feel that way. But he doesn't know what Javi knows. That Yuzuru will create a miracle.

"Of course we do!" There it was. That familiar frown. That set jaw. The stubborn tautening of his cheeks. As the days leading up to the Olympics grew shorter, they had argued. Oh, how they had argued. Quad lutz for Yuzuru, quad loop for Javi. But Javi had grown tired of playing this game. Quads, quads, quads. Who needed skating when one had shiny new jumps. The old resentment tangles in his aching bones once more.

"You do your thing, I'll do mine."

"No." Their fingers interlace. Firm. Unyielding.

"We go. Together."

_"Your six-minute warm-up has ended."_

No small part of Javi keens as it is pierced, over and under. He wanted _—_ wants this _—_ to be real.

"Good luck." Javi tears himself away.

There's sudden gentle laughter from the stands. At the gate, Bruno looks at Javi like he's an idiot.

"Your partner's over there."

Javi pivots. Ghislain is howling with laughter. Brian expels his usual long-suffering sigh. Tracy frantically gesticulates towards the opposite end of the ice. Yuzuru is standing there, hand to his forehead as a sailor gazing out at sea, a fond grin on his face. The moment of epiphany strikes just as the leaderboard flashes.

_"Representing Japan, Yuzuru Hanyu and Javier Fernández!"_

Um.

* * *

And so it goes. It is not the first or last time Javi navigates between the lines. He tugs at each line, lets the time unfurl like a flower. For better or for worse, some lines are stranger than others. The vision of a horrifying lime green Let's Go Crazy is seared permanently on Javi's retinas. Yuzuru the barista gives Javi food poisoning in Tatsuki's posh coffee shop. Javi arrests Yuzuru for stealing a forged painting, which inadvertently ended up exposing an art smuggling operation. Vigilante's work, after all, was still a crime though Javi had allowed Yuzuru to handcuff him to his holding cell before making his dramatic escape.

A stroke of karmic fate has Javi breaking into the Toronto Zoo to free a whooper swan from getting its wings clipped. The scar may have disappeared but the trauma of the bite still lingers threads later. That jerk.

Contrary to popular belief, while cats seem to adore Yuzuru unconditionally for reasons unknown, Yuzuru still has no idea how to properly pet a cat. Several threads later, Javi still catches himself looking in the mirror, seeing a bald spot that was no longer there.

There are lines where their paths don't intersect at all. Where Yuzuru chooses Lee Barkell over Brian. When Javi doesn't break up with Miki. When Javi plays collegiate football and Yuzuru never leaves Sendai. These lines, Javi hurries through them, finds the point, finds the eye, loops the thread. These lines, Javi mistakenly thinks, are the worst ones to untangle.

Until one day in Boston, Javi's world of gray bleeds _red_ for the first time as he watches Yuzuru bite into a towel and squeeze his swollen, necrotizing foot into his skates. Javi spends the rest of the free skate hovering over the toilet ( _white)_ , leaning against the stall ( _green_ ) as he empties the contents of his stomach (notagainnotagainnotagain).

So he heaves and _pulls_ until something gives. When Javi opens his eyes again, Yuzuru is sobbing in his arms, smearing post-nasal drip onto his sleeve.

“No, I can’t, I can’t do it without you."

Javi cradles his chin, looks at those swollen, red-rimmed eyes. He gathers the threads of a hundred lived lines and _chooses._

Shoma has the dubious honor of being hounded by the international press hours later to describe their historic kiss in excruciating detail. 

“It looked very wet,” he says with a shrug. “I guess because Yuzu-kun was crying.”

* * *

And then there were many good days that followed. Better days. Golden days. Days when Yuzuru breaks records faster than the ISU can manipulate them. When the drumbeats of Seimei return once again to Barcelona, and the Man of La Mancha _—_ this time sober _—_ dances in the rinks of Sendai. When they cry and leap for joy when Adrian becomes the first Filipino skater to win an ISU championship. Goodness knows how the boy managed to decipher the “shuus” and “paas” and “ton ton tons” into fully rotated quad jumps complete with transitions and footwork. “Henyo”, or “genius” is what the media will call him. Yuzuru will insist on gold. Javi says any color will do. 

An Olympic medal is an Olympic medal, after all.

There are quieter lines, peaceful ones, and these are the days Javi loves the most. Days when Javi brings burnt beef tongue to work and thinks it is the most delicious thing in the world. When they puzzle out the legalese over their financing their new condominium in Toronto until Effie rearranges their priorities with a plaintive meow. When under washi paper streamers and glowing lanterns, Yuzuru offers his heart one summer day.

The ceremony is private, much to the disappointment of the Japanese media and a sleuthy international fanbase. Tracy mercifully feeds the fanbase on Instagram weeks later.

Javi drinks in happiness like a desert. There is so much of it and he is so grateful that he savors every drop. He has lived and is living every dream he has ever had and will have. Every line is different but perfect and golden in every single way. 

Then one day.

Montreal. Junior Worlds. He sees little Matteo hold his blade guards to his forehead, lips moving in silent prayer, a wish sharpened by will and blade _—_ as his father _—_ wrong thread _—_ did so, so many lines ago.

“I wish with Javi, too.”

Javi knows.

With the intuition of one who has woven and let himself be woven across a tapestry of time and place, Javi knows that finally, _finally,_ he has arrived at the edge. The last line sways back and forth with the unassuming tread of a butterfly. It is not a line that glows bright and golden, but raw and frayed and afraid. Unfinished.

But it is home.

Later that night, Javi asks for Yuzuru’s iPod.

“It’s a secret,” he tells him when Yuzuru asks why.

Yuzuru smiles. It is as beautiful and dazzling as the stars Yuzuru had shown him a galaxy ago. “If it’s for my birthday, Matteo accidentally let slip the plan to make the switch. You didn’t need to get me a new one.”

“Make sure you act really surprised,” Javi tells him. And steals one more kiss from Yuzuru without trying to feel too guilty about it. Hopefully, the universe would not keep score.

After Yuzuru's breathing had evened out to the pattern of sleep, Javi takes out the iPod and lays it out on his desk. Worn but well kept. Javi thinks it’s funny how Yuzuru still insists on keeping an iPod in this age. The screen asks for a password.

021718

The home screen flickers. A smile tugs at Javi's lips. Some things never change. 

Javi studies the home screen photo. It’s a nice one of them, though badly cropped. Typical of Brian.

He flips the iPod over and stares at the unmarked finish before uncapping the marker.

With a deep breath, he loops, threads and _pulls_ his way home.

**Author's Note:**

> * For the brave, click [here](https://twitter.com/3aoutofnowhere/status/1226590270843686912?s=19) to see the lime green LGC in all of its glory (cr: @3aoutofnowhere)


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